My biggest WTF moment was around 500 when he stopped giving stories. That just so happened to coincide with a very hard bunch of kanji.

The story for "briar" 茨 made me go, "Wha???"

The thing that annoyed me the most is how Heisig told us to remember the "flag" primitive as the national flag to keep it separate from the "banner" primitive and then much later you find out there is a "national flag" kanji 旗, which, off course, uses the "banner" primitive. It makes you wonder if Heisig really did any planning at all... v_____v

Yeah, I just used "pee" for the flag primitive. God, did it makes stories easy, haha.

I find it is easier to remember my own stories even if they aren't better than other people's, just because I made them. This is sort of off-topic, but I think that is why Heisig makes some peculiar stories sometimes. I have to go research on wikipedia just to understand what he is talking about sometimes...

Last edited by jackhuddleston (2008 June 09, 4:07 pm)

lazar wrote:

haha yeah, didn't any of you learn some new English words while doing your kanji studies? haha I learned quite a few And I've learned to always have a dictionary ready just incase

That's the major problem with Heisig, having enough English variants to cover the kanji equivalent of synonyms. What was worse, he did not always give the full flavor to the kanji, leaving only to an ambiguous keyword. I've not gone all through RTK3, but I've heard it only gets worse. Thankfully, sites are abound that give better definition or meaning to the kanji.

PS (offtopic): Anyone find Ringo (apple) obscenely easy to write? Seems to be an "impress the natives" kanji if you know it.

I've been struggling with the various snares (1241-1247).  Which one has a horizontal line through this part, which one has a horizontal line through that part, which has both... I guess there's just no easy way to go about those.  It's more of a "What the hell, ancient China...?!" than a "what the hell, James...?!"  Similar goes for all those characters like warrior, style, turn into, etc.  But those I somehow learned without any trouble

Last edited by snispilbor (2008 June 09, 7:53 pm)

Yo playa. Thats a sumo wrestler hanging to a needle. And he is starting to swet.
He made that to answer the request of the king that sent him to pick up his ball and ended up allmost falling in the cliff.

lazar wrote:

haha yeah, didn't any of you learn some new English words while doing your kanji studies? haha I learned quite a few And I've learned to always have a dictionary ready just incase

Completely agree with that!  Decameron?!

Primitive for "silage". I had never seen that word in my life. And "godown".

LOL all the uncommon words, I must have learned at least 50 new English words going through RTK1. I just rushed to dictionary.com to look them up if I didn't understand it... Made remembering those easier as well...

haha yes... it all started with decameron, i agree